Can I have you attention, please?
by rustyliver
Summary: A collection of random drabbles/oneshots.
1. Myka vs Bison

I have started the habit of writing drabbles and short oneshots. This is where you will find them, eventually. They might or might not be connected to each other(most probably not). Thank you for clicking and I hope you stay to read.

This particular oneshot has a special place in my heart because of the prompt. This is said prompt (by damianodefense at tumblr): how about that one time myka and hg went for a walk in the south dakota wilderness and they stumbled across an aggressive bison so myka went all caveman intimidation on the poor beast to protect her woman.

* * *

It is just a walk. An awkward one. H.G. isn't helping either. She is quiet for the first time.

Myka keeps shooting questions at her and she answers each with a brief sentence. One.

Then Myka rambles, revealing details about her childhood, her family, and stumbling at insecurities she has been long past.

H.G. nods her understanding with a smile.

"Are you bored?" Myka eventually asks.

"What?" H.G.'s eyebrows crinkle. "No. What makes you think that?"

"It just feels like a one-sided conversation."

"Darling," Myka's chest flutters. H.G. calls everyone that but somehow, it always feels like a minor earthquake when she does it to Myka. Or maybe it's her knees weakening. "I am simply enjoying you. I find my own voice an unwanted distraction."

Myka trips over a stray root, and H.G. grabs her arm to steady her before she falls on her face.

"Oh yes, my embarassment is very enjoyable," Myka says as she recovers.

H.G. chuckles. "It is quite charming, I must say."

Myka blushes, ready to say the next stupid thing when she notices something moving out of the corner of her eye.

From the way the smirk falters from H.G.'s lips, Myka gathers that she has noticed it too.

It's huge.

And she knows that when faced with a creature that is way bigger than you, you should never take your eyes of it. So she turns, and finds a bison staring at them curiously, or cautiously.

She immediately pulls H.G. close to look more imposing.

It doesn't seem to work. The bison starts approaching them.

They both back away slowly.

"Don't make eye contact," Myka whispers. They take another careful step backwards.

But the bison keeps moving closer.

Then she remembers something about making loud noises but she isn't sure if that is for a bison.

When the bison takes another step towards them, Myka decides there is no time to think about it any longer.

She starts shouting and then adds jumping to the mix to make herself seem bigger.

"I don't—" she hears H.G. say between her nonsensical yelling. "—work!" is the end of that sentence.

She's right. The bison is only coming at them faster.

Myka sees a rock the size of Pete's forehead and quickly dives for it. She throws it next to the bison.

The bison finally stops.

It's working.

She picks up two more rocks and throws one. But this time, the bison reacts by stomping its feet.

When it raises its tail, Myka should have taken it as a sure sign not to throw another rock at it. But her brain seems to have failed to deliver that message to her arm, because the next thing she knows, her arm is extended and she feels her fingers grasping air.

That did it.

The bison charges at them with speed that is unfitting for an animal that huge.

She panics and starts to turn around, but then remembers that that is probably going to make them look more like a prey.

But they should run. They should really run.

But her feet won't move.

But somehow, they're able to lift themselves off the ground at the same time.

That is when she realizes that H.G. has her arm around her hips, and the familiar swishing sound of H.G.'s grappler accompanies their flight past various tree branches.

Myka manages to stay silent for all of five seconds before stuttering a messy apology.

H.G. waits until she finishes before telling her, "I assure you I am not at all bored."

When they go back to the inn and H.G. tells the story to the others, Pete asks Myka, "Are you sure it wasn't a bear? Because it sounds a lot like you think it's a bear."

She can barely look at H.G. as everyone laughs at her.

But then H.G. leans to her ear and whispers, "I'd never thought I would say this, but your neanderthal reaction to the bison really…how do you say it in modern terms, ah yes, turned me on."


	2. Easy

Everyone is tired of it by now. It's understandable since Grandma has told the story nineteen — not a billion (Shut up, Pete! You can't even count that high.) — times.

(Be nice, Kathryn.)

But not you. You love her stories.

Grandma is at the part where the car came out of nowhere.

"I am averse to violence, unlike your Grammy. So I pulled out my grappler instead of a gun."

Grammy rolls her eyes. Your grandmothers have a lot of stories but you know there are stories they will never tell you.

But that's fine. You will find out on your own. Grandma keeps a journal. You finally found it last week but she caught you before you can even open it.

(I let her shoot at the car a few times before I pulled her to the sky.)

Grandma has a fondness for the sky. She says it's because the sky contains all the secrets of the universe, but you know the real reason. It reminds her of Grammy.

Whenever she looks at Grammy, everyone sees how much she adores her. You see that too but you also see a despondent old woman who is staring at someone she can never quite reach.

You don't know why though because it isn't very hard to impress Grammy. She was so proud of you when you became Tree #3 in a play you were forced into during first grade.

(Your Grandma likes her grand gestures. She can't ask a girl out like a normal person.)

Pete's solution to the problem is to get Grandma to use the teleporter. "She can go anywhere in the Milky way," he said. "That's as close to the sky as she can get."

He frustrates you most of time because he never understands anything you tell him but he always stays close during story time, unlike your siblings and other cousins who tend to disappear from the room.

(I could hardly resist your request to be yanked to the sky.)

He could be your favorite cousin if he would stop interrupting the story.

"Did it work?"

"Well, you are both here, aren't you?" Grandma says.

Grammy laughs. "I don't know," she shrugs. "You already had me when you were fawning over the post-its you found."

See?

But you still see that look in Grandma's expression, like she is staring at an impossible.

You think Grammy sees it too because she always kisses Grandma as if to say, "I'm yours." Then she looks into Grandma's eyes and nods.

You think that means, "You better believe it."

It works every time.

You see that look disappear from Grandma's face and she turns into the happiest person in the world.

And that is your favorite part of the story.


	3. Stay

You never sleep when she comes to visit.

You watch.

The steady rise and fall of her chest.

How she mutters between the hours of four and five.

It's too soft for you to tell what it is. But you're close.

You give her a half hearted shake.

"Are you awake?" you ask.

She isn't.

Then you whisper, "I love you."

She doesn't even stir.

You never say those words under a light.

You're afraid she will look past you and leave.

It's easier to say it in the dark.

Your heart twists painfully.

It's hope.

You hope she hears you anyway.

"Please stay."

At least you don't have to see how sorry she is.

You know she's sorry.

She is always sorry.

And you forgive her each time.

That is how desperate you are for her to know that she is more than her mistakes.

Maybe if you do it enough times,

maybe if you say it enough times,

she will finally listen to you.

When sunlight peeks through your curtains, you prepare yourself.

You try to squash the hope before she can.

And you're so busy with that that you didn't hear what she said.

She repeats, "I heard you."

You hold your breath. It's still too early.

"I love you."

Not yet.

"And I am staying."


	4. Monster

Vampire/Werewolf AU

* * *

"I am a monster."

She says it often. Too often, like you can't possibly understand it. Like you aren't a monster yourself.

When you tell her that, she smiles and says, "Darling, you are too gentle, too innocent to be a monster."

You can only wish. You have tasted the blood of many creatures that even without the moon, you still crave it. At least she craves it to survive. You, you crave it for sport.

When it gushes into your mouth, you know that you have defeated you prey, but that is not enough, you dig your teeth deeper into its flesh just to show how helpless it is. Oh, how it whines and begs for its life, but that only gets you more excited. It only makes the blood taste sweeter.

There are times when you are not even hungry. You just do it to kill time until the guilt sets in, when you return to your human skin, when it's not fun to do anymore.

But with her, you're like a puppy playing with its master. Nothing makes you happier when you know that you have pleased her. You insist on head scratches and belly rubs and cuddles. You even respond to her commands. She can make you do anything, even hunt for her, but she refuses. She says it lowers your dignity, that it makes you less of a person, less than her.

She has this idea that you are better than her. You don't think that's true. Maybe she has lived longer than you so her head count is larger, but it doesn't change the color of the blood in her hands. It is as red as the blood on your hands.

Your hands, they match with hers.

You and her are the same.

You are both monsters.

You used to dread the full moon but now, you yearn for it. It's the only time of the month when you can show her how wrong she is about you. The human she sees is only a mask that shames you, that inhibits you from being your true self.

But more than anything, you want her to see that you understand her so that when she wakes up in the middle of the night sweating the tears of her victims, you can tell her that she isn't alone, that you had the same nightmare she had. And she will believe you.


	5. Home

Home is a foreign concept to her. She has never felt like she belonged anywhere, and it is quite a cruel thought, she thinks, because she should have felt like she belonged to Christina, who belongs, no, belonged to her.

If she was not so keen on having her silly adventures, maybe, she wouldn't have lost her Christina. She would have been there when those dreadful burglars came to rob her house, and consequently, her life.

After that, there was no point in having a home anymore. She drifted from the Warehouse to some city to some town to some village at various corners of the world, and back to the Warehouse, to regain the home she never had.

It did not work, as evidenced by the coldness of her once bronze skin she still sometimes feel, and she thought, why not destroy everyone else's home if she cannot have one?

She was stopped, thankfully, by someone who lately feels like home to her.

But what is a home anyway? She has never known it, so how can she feel it?

So, she takes the Astrolabe and denies herself of this home, and onto another adventure that has always given her respite from this thing she doesn't have but everyone else is so fond of, and seems to have.

Then she finds herself in an undisclosed location (somewhere in the southern part of the largest continent on Earth), and the mysterious evil she has been running away from catches up to her, and he has her at gun point, but she does not see the barrel which signals her death. Instead, she sees green eyes looking back at her with a conflicted frown and barely hidden adoration.

And suddenly, she wants to, needs to, live because she has not yet figured out the whole mystery behind those green eyes, and her conscience refuses to let her leave it unsolved.

"Not today," she mutters, and dodges a bullet that is impossible to dodge.

Maybe that is home, she thinks as she starts to run again, a place she desperately wants to return to.


	6. Enigma

Warning: Contains self harm

* * *

Helena Wells confuses you.

Three days after meeting you, she announced;

"I am falling for you."

Your answer;

"I think you're confused."

And to that, she replied, "I know confusion and this is not it—I can no longer feel the ground underneath me and I am not flying, am I? So I must be falling."

You only imagine how that feels like and already your hands are itching for something sharp.

(Something blunt works too, but it takes longer for the pain to arrive.)

But she said it with an easy smile, like there is no other truth in this world that is truer than it.

You thought her vision may be blurred by her curiosity.

You excite her in the way physicists are excited by the so called God Particle that is so damned hard to find. You are an unknown in a messy equation but instead of moving on to a better, more elegant models than you, she spends a great deal of resources to search for the missing piece of a puzzle of a picture of nonsensical blotches of paint put together by a toddler.

That was what you thought—that she could only throw heavy words like 'love' to you because she hasn't seen the whole picture.

You were certain that when she does, she would run for the hills.

But she confuses you again.

As expected, shock and pity filled her eyes.

You look down, waiting for the sound of quickly fading footsteps but it doesn't come. So you wait for the weak apology and the condescending plea. Those don't come either.

No, she asks you to sit and reaches for your thigh before looking up again when you flinch, remembering that it isn't her body but yours.

"May I?"

You nod, possibly too embarrassed by your state of undress, with only a towel covering your body and your dirty little secrets, to think of another reply.

She traces the map you've etched on your skin.

"Do you know the story of the girl who could travel between two worlds?"

You shake your head, this time too embarrassed to be other than honest.

"The second world looks quite like this."

She gently grazes two lines you drew when your father chastised you for not getting a perfect mark while praising Tracy for getting a B.

"This is the River of Snakes. Not a good place to swim. Even a quick dip of a toe will kill you but the girl cools off in the river after a long day. The snakes do bite her but she somehow developed an immunity towards their poison."

Then she moves on to a collection of random dots you doodled with a safety pin.

"This is the Vulture's Desert. It is where the monsters throw their leftovers. If you walk through this desert, you have to keep moving or the vultures will think that you are a corpse."

When her eyes drop to the next destination, she lifts her fingers from your thigh. It is a recent sketch so it appears coarse and is still quite red.

"And that," she only points—she doesn't touch it, "is the Valley of Darkness where the Demon King resides. The girl has many scars from the countless battles she has had with the vicious creatures from this world, but most of the scars came from this valley. She never won a single battle with the Demon King."

"So why does she keep fighting him?"

"Because," she says, resting her hand on your knee, "even though she was born in the first world, the second world feels more like home to her. In that world, she is a brave strong warrior instead of the unremarkable girl she is in the other one. She can't accept her constant defeat to the Demon King as it makes her feel weak. But—"

She hesitates. You can feel a slight tremor of uncertainty in her hand. It is the first time you've witnessed her being less than complacent.

"But," she tries again, "what she never realized is that this persistence is a much greater display of her strength than any victory she will ever achieve."

Finally, she meets your eyes and tries to smile—a reassurance for you but maybe for herself too—but her lips twitch.

"I'd rather think it's a fair maiden she is fighting for," you say. Her anxiety has somehow negated yours.

She heaves a sigh, or laughter.

"Oh, but she has already won her."

The red returns to your cheeks.

"Really? I have a hard time believing a beautiful maiden wanting a fallen knight."

"Really," she says with her usual ease. It seems that some fraction of her confidence has been restored.

You still don't understand how she could say that but you can feel the ground underneath you slowly disappearing and—

And for some reason, it isn't making your scars itch.

.


	7. Charmed

Charmed AU

* * *

They call her the fallen angel, even though she never fell.

.

It happens too fast. One second, Sam is standing in front of Myka and the next, he's gone.

His last word echoes around her in his usual gentle tone.

"Bunny…"

Both are Myka's least favorite things about him. He only does them when he disapproves of her. Ordinarily, she relents. He was her idol. He can do no wrong in her eyes.

But when he told her that he was a demon and she was a powerful witch, she can't really excuse the madness that came out of his mouth. And that wasn't the craziest part because then, he held out his hand to her and said, "Together, we can create a hell on earth."

She had retreated away from him, one hand reaching for her phone and the other reaching for her gun.

"I think that perp hit you harder than you think," she said. "I'm going to call for an ambulance, okay?"

He responded by flicking his hand and both Myka's phone and gun flew across the room. When Myka looked at him again, his eyes had turned black.

That was when she felt a surge of electricity run through her body. She thought it was from the shock and a very intense annoyance over him calling her bunny. She wasn't quite right.

He shook his head and clucked his tongue. "Bunny," he said again as he took a step towards her.

She warned him to stay back but he didn't. He kept moving forward.

Myka didn't think that raising her hands would make him stop. But when her back hit the wall, that was all she could do. Besides, it didn't seem like he was lying about being a demon so she might really be a witch like he said.

To her surprise, it worked. Well, sort of.

.

They call her that because she was born in the dark, and when you grow up in that type of darkness, it never leaves you. Or so they say.

She rejected that notion and proved them wrong.

She soared into the heavens and demanded to be redeemed of the sin that we all bear; the sin of birth.

.

She blew up her boyfriend. With her _hands_.

As if that wasn't enough of a shock, a smarmy English lady shimmers into existence right in front of her five seconds later, exclaiming, "Finally!"

Myka tries to blow her up too. Not intentionally. It was a knee jerk reaction. Apparently, that's what she does now when she is scared.

Like Sam, the woman bursts into black specks of dust and disappears altogether. Myka panics. How is she going to explain it to Captain Dickinson that she pulverized both her partner and some random woman within a minute?

But then a voice announces from behind her, "I am afraid that does not work on me."

She turns and finds the woman again.

"Thank god," Myka says, heaving a sigh of relief, before realizing that there is still imminent danger even if she didn't unintentionally kill someone again.

She raises her hands.

"Please don't," the woman says. "It is rather unpleasant when you do that, even if it doesn't kill me."

"Are you a demon too?" Myka asks.

The woman shakes her head, "No," a smile curling up her lips, "well, it is a complicated issue."

"Simplify it," Myka demands.

.

It wasn't good that she longed for. She found that good was easier to corrupt than evil.

(That was not difficult to figure out. Nothing is easier to taint than the colour white, and the so called authority of good wears it with pride. )

She hated the thought of being that malleable.

But ever since she can remember, she has had this dream of a light that shines over the darkness within her, and it tempts her greatly.

The first whitelighter she met — also the one who was supposed to be her first kill — explained it to her. It was the light of her charge.

.

"In short, I am your guardian angel," Helena (that's her name, the smarmy English lady) says.

Helena told Myka that she is a Charmed One, one of the three powerful witches who are destined to protect innocents from the big bad evil. The other two are her older brother and younger sister. They were separated at birth for their safety.

"Pete," that's her brother (her sister's name is Claudia), "is not going to be happy that I found you first."

Pete isn't Helena's biggest fan. And apparently Myka is at her most vulnerable at the moment, so she should stay away from anyone who could sway her to the dark side.

Myka laughs wryly, "I think someone already beat you to that."

Helena's forehead creases, "Was that why you called for me?"

Myka nods, and tells her about Sam.

The smirk on Helena immediately disappears. "Where is he?" she asks, that playful lilt in her words completely transformed into a menacing tone.

"Whoa," Myka takes her hand, "I'd already gotten rid of him. So I'm all good."

She laughs, amused by Helena's sudden protectiveness. She did call for help after all, and when the angel appeared, the first thing she told Myka was not to calm down. She didn't even try to explain carefully who Myka is. Myka had to ask first. No, the first thing that she told Myka was that Pete, the brother Myka wasn't even aware of then, owed her ten bucks because she found Myka before him.

Helena looks at Myka's hand, the one that is holding hers, and her smile returns.

"I am glad I finally found you," she says.

Myka blushes for some reason, and pulls her hand away.

"Well, it would have been better if you came earlier."

.

She asked him how to reach it.

And he said, "Good."

She spent the next hundred years fighting all the instincts she was born with, to prove that she can be good, just so she can ready herself for this light that has always haunted her dreams.

It was not the easiest thing to do. Her family and friends disowned her. They even tried to kill her. And when she turned to the whitelighters, they turned her away, saying that she could never be good.

It was a long lonely road.

But when the light touches her and she realizes that it was no longer a dream — that this is real, and she is no longer staring longingly at someone who is out of reach — she knows that it was all worth it.


End file.
